Tag Archives | Prime Minister

Thai lawmakers have voted in their first female prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, whose political career began just a few months ago. The Bangkok Post reports:

Pheu Thai Party list MP Yingluck Shinawatra was elected Thailand's 28th prime minister by a majority vote in the House of Representatives on Friday morning.
A total of 296 MPs voted in support of Ms Yingluck, the country’s first female prime minister, while three Democrat MPs voted against her, with 197 abstentions - including Ms Yingluck, the new speaker and one of his deputies, and most members of the main opposition parties, the Democrat and Bhumjaithai parties, and the four members of the Rak Thailand Party led by Chuvit Kamolvisit.
The three Democrat lawmakers who voted against Ms Yingluck were Boonyod Sukthinthai, Watchara Phetthong and Attaporn Ponlaboot.
The four MPs who did not attend the House meeting today were Ratchadaporn Kaewsanit, Khanchit Thapsuwan, Yukol Chanawatpanya and Sathit Pitutaecha, all Democrats.

No, it’s not the plot to the next Hostel film. Hashim Thaçi has been identified as the head of an Albanian crime network that sells drugs, weapons, and organs. The Guardian reports:

Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.

Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country’s government since.

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted “violent control” over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi’s inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.